


Day - Wasted

by QueenMegaera



Series: A Game of Association [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - Ian Fleming
Genre: Between missions, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, routines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-13 07:36:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1217893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenMegaera/pseuds/QueenMegaera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not every day contained a life or death situation. Most days, in fact, only contained endless MI6-reports, workouts, and a visit to Q-branch to sharpen his wits against Q's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day - Wasted

**Author's Note:**

> This snippet draws heavily on the descriptions of Bond's everyday duties and habits in the Moonraker novel. Slightly updated, of course. The number of double-O's, the rough frequency of their missions, and their secretary Miss Ponsonby are also taken from the book.

James Bond lead a very exciting life – a few weeks of each year. The rest of the time, when there were no assignments suited for a double-O, he spent his days preparing for potential missions. Missions that might never come along. God only knew how many reports he had read on sticky political situations abroad that were later resolved without the slightest involvement of MI6, or on newly developed weapons in Russia or America that were obsolete before Bond ever got a chance to lay his hands on them. Rebel uprisings turned into revolutions, revolutions turned into governments and governments got overthrown – all of it reaching Bond as black letters on white papers in manila folders placed in the inbox of the double-O-section. MI6 reports: many of them were utterly dull, most of them would never turn out to be useful, and absolutely all of them had to pass before his eyes before they could be filed away. This was part of the reason agents like him were given cyanide capsules: they knew everything. Well, everything the MI6 officially knew, anyway. There was no doubt in Bond's mind that M, Tanner, and some of the department heads knew a considerable amount besides that.

Computers had slowly been taking the place of paper over the decade Bond had been in the Service, but plenty of the old manila folders were still in circulation – at least in the parts of the building rarely visited by members of Q-branch. Bond rather liked it that way. He knew his way around a computer, despite what Q thought, but he found paper easier on the eyes when he had to spend a whole day reading, and it allowed him to make notes in the margin for the other two active double-O-agents if he was the first of them to read it.

Practical training was a better pastime. From the Service's point of view it was absolutely necessary for him to stay in shape and keep his reflexes sharp. From his own point of view, it cleared his mind, cleansed his body and raised his endorphin-levels. Being able to exercise during work hours was an occupational bonus Bond had always had, both in the Navy and in the Service, and a day without at least 30 minutes on the treadmill or a round of mixed martial arts against another stranded field agent made him feel as if something was seriously wrong. A round on the firing range never hurt either. A few years after he'd joined, Bond had been the best shot in the service. He didn't want to ask where he ranked now. Even though he'd picked up most of what he'd lost when Moneypenny had shot him and sent him halfway to the grave, he wasn't stupid enough to believe he was anywhere near as good as he had been. Still, he was certainly a better marksman than anyone outside of the double-O-section, and he supposed that counted for something.

Bond divided his office-bound days into three shifts: reading, training (followed by a late lunch), and reading again. When the lights began to go out in the offices around him, he finished whatever outlandish rapport he was currently reading – today it was a paper on a new chemical weapon supposedly being developed in North Korea – put on his jacket, turned off the lights, said goodnight to Miss Ponsonby, and headed home.

On his way out of the building, he usually made a detour to say goodbye to someone else, too. He didn't look too deeply into why. It felt nice to see more than two other people in a day, that was all.

Some days his steps would lead him up to the anteroom to M's office, where both Tanner and Moneypenny could usually be found, never leaving before M did. Some days they took him back to the gym where he could usually find someone he had at least a passing acquaintance with to wave goodbye to – even though he always found it eerie to look at all the new faces there and realise yet again that most of the field agents that had been in the Service when he joined up were either retired or dead – and some days, his steps took him to Q-branch.

Q could generally be relied upon to work just as late as Tanner and Moneypenny. Bond had ascertained that he usually came in late and staid well into the evening, keeping what his predecessor had called "students' hours". When Bond visited the department in the late afternoons the level of activity was usually low, with several desks already empty and idle conversations taking over at some of the occupied ones. The only person never involved in this frivolous behaviour was Q. Q only engaged in frivolous conversation with Bond, and even then only under the carefully constructed guise of talking shop. Bond would ask what he was working on, or ask his opinion on some weapon or technical solution mentioned in those dreary reports. Q would invariably have heard of these, and Bond often wondered if it was possible that all the manila folders and pdf-files that were passed on to him had reached Q's desk first. It wouldn't be out of question, given that Q certainly ranked higher than him both as a department head and, well, someone who was considered to have a longer career ahead of him – but when in God's name did he have time to read it all? He never seemed to be sitting at his desk when Bond came around; instead fidgeting around between workshops, server rooms and testing areas like an amphetamine addict with the IQ of a Nobel prize winner. Or several Nobel prize winners. _And the dress sense of one, too,_ thought Bond, as Nobel prize winners were usually the kind of old men you would _expect_ to see in ill-fitted slacks and cardigans with tea-stains. Sometimes, Bond thought, it was as if the old Q had invented a de-aging device, come back as a spotty youth, and then just carried on with business as usual. Other times, when Q scoffed at Bond's witticism or smirked at his own, it was nothing like that at all.

Bond smiled to himself as he rounded a corner and entered Q-branch. A middle-aged woman with headphones looked up when we walked in. "He's not here", she said instantly, as if there was no other reason for Bond to be there. He supposed there wasn't. "Conference," she said. "Won't be back until next week." Bond's heart sank more than he'd have expected it to. He turned and left, with a feeling that his entire day had been wasted.

It rained outside, and he turned up his collar. The feeling had been sneaking up on him for some time now, and he had barely registered the minute changes in his habits. It was only two nights ago that he had realised that, lately, his feet carried him to Q-branch almost every day. Now, as the rain soaked his scalp, he realised that for almost as long, he had considered every day when he didn't see Q as wasted.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love!


End file.
